New reports show that three teenagers accused of crimes linked to recent protests in Iran could be sentenced to death, while human rights groups say the sentences are linked to a new escalation in a brutal campaign aimed at intimidating young people from participating in protests. insurrection.
And Iranian state media reported that three teenagers are on trial in a Tehran suburb along with dozens of others on charges of killing a police officer, according to a Washington Post report.
Prosecutors from the Revolutionary Court, a special branch of the judiciary that handles cases affecting national security, charged three teenagers with “murder of a policeman and local corruption,” two crimes punishable by death in Iran.
Raha Bahraini, an Iran researcher at Amnesty International, commented on the recent legal actions related to the protesters, saying they are “unfair trials and aimed at instilling fear in the hearts of the population.”
She said: “These measures fit within the context of Iran’s increased use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression,” according to the Washington Post.
Youth have played a prominent role in the protests in Iran that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, but they have also suffered repression. The human rights news agency Grana reported that more than 400 Iranians, including 60 minors, were killed during the protests.
Iran leads among the countries that use the death penalty, including the execution of children, although it has signed several United Nations conventions that prohibit the death penalty for minors.
Amnesty International said it confirmed the execution of three minors this year, unrelated to recent protests in Iran.
Hearings were held on Wednesday and Thursday in Karaj, an Iranian city near Tehran. During the trial, the head of the court said that the three teenagers, Arin Farzamne, Amin Mahdi Shukralla and Amir Mahdi Jafari, could be tried along with adults because the judge is competent in both criminal hearings and juvenile cases, Judicial News reported. She heads the agency. Iran (Mizan).
Commenting on this, Hossein Raisi, a former lawyer in Iran and a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, stated that it is “completely against the interests of minors and Iranian procedural law.”
While Mizan says the juveniles have pleaded guilty, rights groups say the trial is expected to be unfair. Iranian officials often coerce political prisoners and their families into perjury in order to convict them.
According to New York-based executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran Hadi Ghaimi, the defendants were denied access to their lawyers and were instead represented by court-appointed lawyers, according to the Washington Post.
According to Mizan, the teenagers’ parents asked to speak in court and asked the judge to punish their children properly and gently.
Shukralla’s father said he asked his son not to go to protests planned by “enemies,” Mizan said, echoing the state’s claim that Western media and intelligence agencies are fueling unrest.
According to the Bahraini, one of the defendants was tortured in prison and was hospitalized due to broken ribs and breathing problems.
Gimi said about 18,000 people have been arrested in Iran since September, and at least 36 of them have been charged with capital offenses.
Some death sentences have already been handed down, but none of them have been carried out.
The Iranian Penal Code, amended in 2012, which has been scrutinized by religious scholars for its compatibility with the Iranian constitution and Islamic law, provides that the death penalty applies to persons convicted of a range of crimes, including enmity against God, conspiracy to overthrow the Islamic religion , deliberate vandalism, political opposition, arson and riots, and many other acts that criminalize and punish those responsible with the death penalty to ensure the continued rule of the Islamic State in Iran.
UN experts have previously urged Iran to “stop using the death penalty as a tool to suppress protests,” noting that eight people were sentenced to death in Tehran on October 29.
Earlier, the judiciary-linked website Mizan reported that “the man who burned down the government center was sentenced to death and charged with disorderly conduct, assembly and conspiracy to commit a crime against national security.”
He added that five other defendants were sentenced to five to ten years in prison for being found guilty of “assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security and disturbing public order and property.”